Last night a few lucky Risdallians attended Minnesota Business magazine’s 2015 Community Impact Awards, which celebrates Minnesota companies that practice a strong dedication to giving back to the communities they are part of. Risdall as a Finalist in the Community Impact Awards As an integrated digital marketing agency, Risdall is able to give back to our community by using our various services in web development, creative design, public relations, strategy, branding and digital marketing. Risdall placed as a finalist in this year’s Creative Campaign category for our consistent work to improve the region by providing local organizations with monetary and skills-based donations. Recently, we

Everyone needs data to make decisions at work. Google Analytics has become the go-to resource for getting that information related to an organization’s website. However, the information you need to make decisions is often different from the data your colleagues need to make their decisions. A custom dashboard in Google Analytics can be a great way to empower your colleagues to check in on the data they need without overwhelming them with the entire Google Analytics suite. Most importantly, giving a colleague access to personalized, custom dashboard will save you time in the long run. In this post, I’ll walk

With 33 years of collective work at Risdall between Erik, James, Mariann, Steve and Zoe, these Risdallians embody the passion and loyal personalities that Risdall is known for. That’s 33 years of bringing our clients Growth Powered by Risdall, 33 years of neon lights and 33 years of making the donuts. In celebration of their anniversaries, CEO Ted Risdall presented these five Risdallians with a rose for each year they’ve spent with our team. “The anniversaries of Zoe, Steve, Mariann, James and Erik range from two years all the way to 17 years, and it’s exciting to watch these talented folks grow

With a broad range of trinkets that can be customized with your logo and colors, the possibilities for trade show giveaways and displays are endless. But which items will make you stand out at trade shows? That depends on whom you’re targeting. If you’re at trade shows to gain media coverage, then you want to focus your trade show handouts on journalists. Journalists are interested in the latest and greatest product or service your company offers without getting into a sales pitch or a history lesson on your company. Consider the following tips at trade shows to benefit journalists. Concise,

In the 37th annual Minnesota Public Relations Society of America (MN PRSA) Classics, Risdall Public Relations placed as a finalist in five distinct categories: social media, institutional programs, special events/observances, marketing services and industry campaign of the year. MN PRSA Classics recognizes outstanding public relations campaigns and tactics from communications businesses and departments throughout Minnesota. The entries are peer-judged for their effectiveness in solving public relations challenges through creative solutions. What MN PRSA Classics Means to Risdall Public Relations The MN PRSA Classics are always an exciting time of year because we get the chance to formally celebrate our clients’

We hope everyone enjoys a day of love and romance this Valentine’s Day. It’s a great holiday when you’ve planned dinner, found a babysitter and bought the perfect gift for your special someone. However, if you’re one of the unlucky people who forgot about the holiday, leaving yourself scrambling to pick up red roses and chocolates, here is a crisis communication plan to stay on your sweetheart’s good side. The first step to crisis management is to list your options. If you forgot about Valentine’s Day, you have three options: Buy yourself some time, hustle to the store and pick

At the beginning of each quarter, Risdall’s staff members hold a Quarterly Review where they share the biggest highlights from the previous quarter. This quarter, clients in education, manufacturing and government dominated the conversation. Here are three of Risdall’s proudest moments from quarter four of 2014: BizRecycling BizRecycling is helping businesses start or enhance recycling and waste reduction programs. Under a new state law, most businesses in the Twin Cities must offer recycling for at least three types of materials by January 1, 2016. Risdall helped BizRecycling employ a media plan (in 2014 and 2015) encouraging businesses to recycle, and continues to assist the

As one of our biggest passions and areas of expertise, the education industry is a main focus for Risdall. We’re excited to announce a number of new education relationships that helped us enter the New Year with a bang. “Risdall now has a footprint in three of the nation’s 10 largest state university systems,” said Ted Risdall, CEO of Risdall. “With creative, public relations, advertising, web and digital experts, we provide our partners with a comprehensive solution for all of their marketing challenges.” Risdall’s Latest Higher Education Relationship One of the top 10 public research universities in the nation, The

As technology evolves, so do the skill sets of people who use it. The latest craze in the communications world is content marketing. A quick Google search for this buzzword will turn up hundreds of posts from what it is to how to use it to engage your audience to how to get the most out of your strategy. “In the new world of public relations, brands are creating their own content – like infographics, e-books, podcasts, webinars, YouTube videos, and branded magazines – that are distributed for free on their digital channels.” – Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Minnesota Digging deeper into this trending

Have you ever wondered which of the tools Google offers are right for your business? Fortunately, there is a way to set up your Google accounts so you can avoid the massive headaches and roadblocks that come when you have to consolidate multiple Google profiles. One of the challenges that the digital marketing team runs into with clients is the multiple log-ins or profiles that they have created for their business across the various Google tools. Often each tool being used is associated with a different email or username. Pulling together all of the accounts under one email or username

Joel Swanson is wearing two hats this year as president of Risdall Public Relations and president of Minnesota’s chapter of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Joel has been a member of PRSA for the last 24 years, filling various positions within the executive committee and board of directors throughout his membership. The officer track for PRSA Minnesota is a five-year commitment, serving as secretary, treasurer, vice president, president, and immediate past president for one year each. “For me, it’s the culmination of more than 20 years of involvement in the organization,” said Joel. Even with a schedule filled to

Everybody loves a good war story. They are often a great way to inform people of your services, expertise and accomplishments in an engaging way. While telling your story, you have to tread on a thin line between an engaging story and outright bragging. Holding on to these golden stories, but not letting the public know, is a missed opportunity for businesses. Sharing the positive aspects of your organization is the best tactic you can employ for your public image. Here are three ways to share all the good your company is doing without sounding like you’re bragging. Promote Your

As the first month of 2015 comes to a close, many small businesses and marketers are finding themselves contending with another change to how Facebook works. If you haven’t heard, Facebook announced in November that it is changing which types of content will appear in users’ news feeds. The change went into place this month, making posts from business pages that are deemed “overly promotional” no longer reach the business’ fans. Not only does this affect an organization’s digital marketing and promotional messaging, but its customer acquisition strategy as well. Key Elements of Customer Acquisition on Social Facebook has placed

Communication was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s forte. He is known as one of America’s most influential speakers, even 52 years after he gave his iconic “I Have a Dream…” speech. During this speech, King captivated his audience with poetic language and thought-provoking ideas. He painted a picture of how life could be instead of focusing on the negative aspects of how life was. Today’s communicators can learn several public speaking lessons from King’s famous speech, including using positive language, narrowing your focus and using your words to create a visual description. Using Positive Language Makes Your Communication Clear Even though

Websites like Glassdoor have allowed people to see inside organizations through reviews from current and former employees. People post honest reviews, positive and negative. But what happens when the negative reviews overwhelm the positive ones? Consider how the negative reviews will affect your business and what you can do to manage the online reputation of your organization. If your business has found itself receiving consistent negative reviews, you may want to consider taking steps to repair your online reputation. Realize There May Be a Problem With Your Online Reputation First consider the commitment it will take. Repairing online reputation takes

One of the many benefits of public relations is that it helps your brand build positive connections with its audiences that lead to profitable results. Here are three New Year’s Resolutions your business might have, and how enlisting a public relations agency can help you achieve them. Public Relations Promotes Your Business, so You Don’t Have To Sometimes promoting your business can fall by the wayside when you’re focusing on day-to-day tasks of keeping a company running. This is where an outside team of experts can come in handy. Instead of taking the time out of your day to post

It has been an amazing year of transition and growth for Risdall, and we’re poised for an extraordinary year in 2015. Our staff, strategy and growing client list have come a long way in the past 12 months. I’d like to start by giving thanks to my father, John Risdall. He founded this agency on the principle of giving clients what they want and need by drawing creativity from any and every communications discipline to help them make money, while also having fun in a prosperous agency environment. With the mantra, “It’s a party!” John’s integrated approach was ahead of

As we approach the end of 2014, we’d like to take a look at this last year and reflect upon the good times, memories and successes we’ve gained for our clients and the agency. At Risdall, we recognize that no one builds an ad agency alone. The support of our dedicated clients and hardworking staff members has allowed us to get where we are today. To all the individuals who worked with us to achieve success in 2014, thank you! Prosperity for Our Partners: Vision-Ease Lens – Celebrity Endorsement Vision-Ease Lens gained industry-leading coverage of its Coppertone Polarized Lenses, including

Facebook announced last month that they were making a change to the type of content that appears on people’s news feeds. Content from business pages that is “overly promotional” won’t appear in the news feeds of people who have liked the page. The announcement came after the company looked into data from an ongoing survey of Facebook users, which showed that users want to see more content from friends and pages they care about, and fewer promotional posts. The change won’t occur until January 2015, but it will impact many online campaigns in the next year and will be another

Content curation is an important aspect of any content marketing program. One of its main benefits is that the burden of continually creating content is alleviated by sharing content you find online with your audiences. In this final post about last month’s Growth Powered by Risdall seminar on content marketing, I, Dave Dougherty, Risdall’s Digital Marketing Specialist, will explore the advantages of content curation within a content program and how most people don’t have an excuse for why they haven’t started curating content on a daily basis. It’s much easier to do than you might initially think. Make the Content You

Technology has a way of advancing faster than industries can keep up with it, but with rapid advances in technology comes inevitable advances in industries. A trend that has gained popularity with healthcare companies is creating patient portals to provide their patients with easy access to their health information. “A patient portal is a Web-based access point that allows doctors and patients to communicate and share health information remotely, supplementing the ongoing management of the patient’s care.” – Healthcare IT News Best Practices for Healthcare Patient Portals When a healthcare company decides to add a patient portal to its website,

Last month, during Risdall’s Growth Powered by Risdall seminar I, Dave Dougherty, Risdall’s Digital Marketing Specialist, gave a presentation on the content creation aspects of a content marketing program. Instead of telling you how to create content, like a million other blogs do, I shared two key points to keep in mind during the content creation phase. I’ve found, both personally and with clients, it is easy to dive immediately into the tactical elements of content creation. Especially, when the thought that starts the process is something like: We need a YouTube presence. Let’s make a video today. It’s important

Each year Minnesota Business Magazine holds the Community Impact Awards to honor companies in Minnesota that place a high importance on giving back to their communities. For the magazine’s 2015 competition, Risdall was named one of three finalists in the Creative Campaign category for its strong devotion to helping families and children over the years. Risdall’s History of Community Involvement As a full-service digital marketing agency, Risdall is able to give back to the community in a unique way. Through a combination of monetary and skills-based donations, the agency helps non-profits and organizations in need. We have longstanding relationships with

Repurposing content is an often overlooked feature of a content marketing program. Repurposing is useful for two reasons: getting a single message out in multiple ways, across multiple platforms, and easing the burden of always having to create new content or finding content to curate. In the recent seminar, Growth Powered by Risdall, I, Dave Dougherty, Risdall’s Digital Marketing Specialist, covered how to repurpose content once you’ve spent time developing your strategy and curating and creating content for your content marketing program. Don’t Sell Yourself Short by Not Repurposing Content Repurposing can be either drawing attention to an older piece

In the November content marketing seminar, Growth Powered by Risdall, the digital marketing team opened the half-day festivities by explaining why you should start your content marketing planning with strategy. Content marketing is defined as the process of finding, developing and sharing relevant, valuable and engaging content with target audiences, with a goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers. Without a good strategy in place you’ll be shooting into the dark, hoping that your content will do what you want it to. In this blog and video, Josh Dahmes, Risdall’s Chief Digital Marketing Manager explains the

This fall Risdall’s Digital Marketing team hosted a half-day seminar called, Growth Powered by Risdall, in which the digital team covered the most important aspects of a content marketing program. The video attached to this blog is a presentation by Tracy Henry, Risdall’s Senior Marketing Manager, covering how you should go about optimizing your content. For a long time, the focus of optimization has been on search engine optimization, or SEO. While that is definitely a part of it, optimization is a much larger topic that also focuses on the purpose that the content is created for and how the

Throughout the year Risdall likes to host seminars where we can provide the latest and greatest tools, techniques and how-to’s for our current and prospective clients. Recently Risdall put on a seminar titled: Growth Powered By Risdall, which focused on content marketing. In this video version of the presentation, Risdall’s Tracy Henry, Senior Marketing Manager, spoke about how to amplify your content across various Internet channels to get the most out of your digital marketing initiatives. What is Content Amplification? Content amplification can be defined simply as the marketing of your marketing materials. The reason to do this is

In November, Risdall put on a live seminar called, Growth Powered by Risdall, which focused on content marketing. The topics included content strategy, content curation, content creation, content amplification, content optimization, and analyzing your content’s performance. In this portion of the seminar, Risdall’s Marketing Manager, Beth Varela, explains three tactics: How to apply the right metrics to your content How to use secondary dimensions in Google analytics to attribute metrics to content How to assign the right goals to each piece of content in your content marketing initiatives Content Marketing and the Buyer’s Journey Content marketing is like any other

Congratulations to Risdall and our clients! The results of the 2014 Mobile WebAwards competition are in, and Risdall’s clients received five Best in Industry awards! On top of the awards, Risdall was named an Outstanding Mobile Interactive Developer for taking home five awards this year. These wins demonstrate the talent of Risdall’s expert web development team, which stays on top of the trends in traditional and mobile website design. “It is an honor to be considered a digital leader among web design agencies in the Twin Cities,” said CEO Ted Risdall. “With changing communication comes changing technology, and we are

Like many marketing practices, website development is an ever-changing field. To succeed in this field, designers need to constantly adapt to what consumers desire. We’ve looked at our clients’ requests and come up with three web development trends that designers can watch out for in 2015. Responsive is everything. In January, 55 percent of Internet access came via cell phones. With more people accessing websites on their smart phones, websites need to be responsive if you want visitors to get the most out of your site. All the buzz around responsive websites is because they adapt to whatever size screen

Your website can give viewers their first impression of your company. And as we all know, a first impression is hard to change, so let’s make sure it’s a good one. Follow these four elements to set the foundation for an award-winning healthcare website that will be sure to leave a good impression. Big, Beautiful Pictures A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in the case of healthcare websites. The human brain can process images 60,000 times faster than text, and visitors often spend most of their time looking at photos on a page rather than reading paragraphs of

Just as the Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone, so have Risdall’s Movember moustaches. Our team gathered donations and grew their moustaches for the entire month of November to raise awareness for men’s health. The moustaches serve as ice breakers to spark conversations on important issues that affect men, specifically mental health, prostate and testicular cancers. To spruce up the moustache season around the office, we held a few friendly competitions where employees voted on three different types of ‘staches: the most professional, the thickest ‘stache and the most minimal moustache. We had two more awards for “Highest Number of Donors”

Happy Thanksgiving! Feeling thankful to so many and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. 2014 represents our 42nd year in business, and I wanted give thanks for all that has made this possible, especially our clients. First, I am thankful for Risdallians. Fueled by an unmatched work ethic – plus jars of candy and scooter laps around the building – we have worked tirelessly this year to make a difference for our clients and our community. I am also thankful that we were able to give some of our time to pro bono projects

We’re celebrating a big win after learning The University of Texas at Tyler chose Risdall to be its long-term agency partner. The upcoming projects will involve all of the agency’s services, such as brand research, strategic positioning, online marketing and video production on the road to making UT Tyler the first choice for higher education in Texas. In the past, Risdall has worked with several schools in the higher education industry, including Brown College and McNally Smith College of Music, and we look forward to our work with the team at UT Tyler. Through extensive research, we’ve gained a full

College students have been a primary market for Taco Bell for years. With the cheap tacos, late-night hours and witty humor on social media, Taco Bell has whole heartedly embraced its following. Here are three strategies that we can learn from the fast food mogul to garner a strong Gen Y following. Humor sells According to a survey by Chegg, college students recall humorous stories 80 percent better than their non-humorous alternatives. Whether it’s YouTube, window clings or radio spots, the marketers at Taco Bell are experts on using humor to develop the brand’s personality. Socialize on social media Taco

The moustaches are showing and the donations are growing in our third week of the Movember fundraiser at Risdall. Our team has raised $680 so far, and with two weeks left, we’re on track to hit our goal of $1,000. Movember was created to spark conversations about health issues specific to men. For the month of November, participants grow and groom their moustaches, and only their moustaches, while gathering donations for their team. The neatly groomed moustaches unify participants, or Mo Bros, and provide an ice breaker for conversation topics that aren’t widely discussed. All donations support research for men’s

As a full-service agency, Risdall continually works to develop each team’s skills, bringing out its full potential. Since we entered the digital world in 1993, we’ve continued to maximize our digital processes. With that in mind, we’ve created a six-step approach for content marketing at Risdall: strategy, curation, creation, optimization, amplification and measurement. Although we could create a blog post for each one of these steps, we decided to start with an overview of how each step fits into the process and works toward a client’s goals. Risdall’s 6 Steps for Content Marketing Strategy What Is It: Strategy means defining

From a simple After Eight to the intricate Connoisseur, gentlemen at Risdall will show off their moustaches of all sizes and styles this month in appreciation of Movember. Following the official rules of Movember, Risdallians started with a clean-shaven face on November 1. For the entire month, gentlemen, and women, will grow and groom their moustaches, transforming into true Mo Bros. Starting in Australia in 2003, the popular fundraiser was created to benefit men’s health issues by sparking discussions about health concerns and raising funds specifically for mental health, prostate and testicular cancers. The movement has grown to include 21 countries, and has

Risdall helped refresh Northern Star Council Boy Scouts’ brand and public image in the first year of its statewide Rocket Into Scouting recruitment event, culminating in a 43 percent enrollment increase from 2013 totals. In 2014, Northern Star Council strategically transformed Rocket Into Scouting from a multiple-date event into a single-time recruitment effort, where kindergarten through fifth grade boys who signed up for Cub Scouts and their families received a free model rocket to build and launch at the first pack meeting. Through the efforts of multiple Risdall services, Rocket Into Scouting enrolled 4,143 new Cub Scouts at over 700

If you’re looking for the ideal area to invest, Minnesota is the place to be. With 248 unique businesses started between 2010 and 2013, investors have put a total of $247.7 million toward startups in Minnesota in the last four years. One factor encouraging investors both in and out of state is the Minnesota Angel Tax Credit program, which provides a 25 percent refundable tax credit for investors who put their money toward qualified small emerging businesses. The program has more than doubled since it started in 2010 with $7 million in credits. Four years later, the program increased funding and dispersed

Risdall Marketing Group

An independently owned, full-service advertising agency, Risdall is located in New Brighton, Minnesota, a suburb just a short drive north of downtown Minneapolis and convenient to St. Paul, as well. We are one of the largest, longest-lived independent ad agencies in Minnesota and the United States.